Archives Receive Digitization Grant

A Leon Levy Foundation grant will expand access to Juilliard's archves

Access to Juilliard’s history was given a big boost with a $233,000 gift from the Leon Levy Foundation to help preserve parts of the Juilliard Archives collection. The funds will be used to digitize some 60 scrapbooks that document the school’s history from its founding, as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, as well as concert programs and more than 70,000 production photos. Expressing Juilliard’s gratitude, Jane Gottlieb, vice president of library and information resources and director of the C.V. Starr doctoral fellows program, noted that the school’s history is “indelibly intertwined with that of the global performing arts field and the cultural landscape of New York City.”

Though portions of Juilliard’s archives and special collections have been digitized and made available to both the scholarly community and the general public, the majority of these materials are accessible only by visiting the on-campus library, a limitation that became even more apparent during the pandemic. The digitization of these holdings will make them accessible remotely to students, faculty, staff, and scholars.

The photographer who digitized the Juilliard Manuscript Collection, Ardon Bar-Hama, whose clients include private collectors and the Vatican, will return to oversee this project, which is expected to be completed within two years.